The War At Home

Obviously, not all (or even most) conservatives are violent, murderous lunatics. However, imagine for just one second what the Right Wing Howler Monkey Media Chorus would've done if this attack had been a Muslim (or an atheist or even just someone non-religious) going after a conservative church because of their politics. We'd be getting wall-to-wall coverage. And what are we to make of the constant barrage of violent rhetoric from the RWHMMC? Can we seriously doubt it was a contributing factor?

A Little Good News

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) has introduced a bill to address the epidemic of white-on-Indian crime in Indian Country. While far short of a full restoration of sovereignty, it does strengthen the power of tribal courts and tribal police and force some measure of accountability on the Department of Justice. It's a good start, but Congress needs to go further and repeal the odious Major Crimes Act outright and explicate overturn the Oliphant decision (which they can do since the case was based on a transparently false reading of Congressional intent or rather the lack thereof).

Supreme Court Does...Something?

The US Supreme Court may or may not have held, in a case arising in Texas, that persons who are arrested have the right to an attorney at their bond hearing (known as an Article 15.17 hearing). Having only skimmed the ruling itself and discussed it with several other lawyers and judges, we have no idea what the hell it means or what effect, if any, it will have on the way things are currently done. Thanks, Souter! Right now, in Johnson County anyway, arrestees are advised by the magistrate judge that they have the right to an attorney and one is appointed as soon as they ask for one. In other counties, including apparently Gillespie, the county in the Supreme Court case, lawyers aren't appointed until indictment. Further updates as events warrant.

UPDATE: More on Rothgery, again from Grits.

The Latest from Eldorado

Grits and I have been arguing for some time that the warrant used to justify raiding YFZ Ranch had some problems. Apparently, we were right. In fact, it seems to me that the original warrant strains the "good faith exception" into "deliberate and willful ignorance," i.e., "we can confirm that Dale Barlow is a convicted sex offender but we were shocked, shocked and appalled to discover he was in Arizona at the time!" However, given the current climate in Texas criminal appellate law ("the only error is harmless error"), I'd say the chances are good this warrant would hold up, assuming we even get to the stage of holding criminal trials. Right now, we don't even have any alleged perpetrators named (other than Barlow, of course), much less any arrests. And, of course, the warrant is meaningless for purposes of removal, since DFPS doesn't need a warrant, valid or otherwise, to remove children.

And from the Common Room, excerpts from an interview with the Schleicher County Sheriff. This bit...

Mankin: That’s a big operation to put together in three days, surely law enforcement must have had a preliminary plan in place ready to deal with this kind of eventuality?

(Sheriff) Doran: Let’s just say that law enforcement was and is prepared to answer a cry for help at the YFZ Ranch.

...tends to confirm my suspicion that this was a law enforcement operation with a CPS removal attached, and not the other way around.

Why So Angry?

While drug crime is OVERprosecuted among blacks, violent crime is UNDERprosecuted. Though Drum rightly critiques the article for taking an obliviously narrow definition of "white racism," the statistics are stomach-churning. The whole thing reminds me rather uncomfortably of the situation regarding white-on-Indian crime in Indian Country, only on a much larger scale.

Righting a Wrong

Washington State, which gave birth to the Oliphant decision giving non-Indians extra-territoriality to commit crimes in Indian Country without fear of arrest or prosecution by tribal authorities, now proposes to at least partially correct that error by giving the Tulalip Tribe concurrent jurisdiction over crimes commited by non-Indians on Indian land.

Lawless, Part 2

At least the Los Angeles Times gets it. "Sovereignty" is not just about casinos and license plates; it's about saving innocent women and children from predatory white men and a federal government that couldn't care less.

Lawless

I listened to this story on NPR the other day about the alarming increase in sexual assault in Indian Country, overwhelmingly Native women being raped by white men, and how convoluted and contradictory Federal law ensures that the perpetrators will almost never be caught, let alone prosecuted. Even though the facts were all well-known to me, I found myself growing so angry I had to sit in my truck for awhile in the parking lot and cool off. Part of the reason for my anger was that NPR was far too genteel to mention the real reason for the crime explosion on Native lands: the institutional racism of Congress and the Supreme Court that has castrated Tribal Sovereignty, stripped tribal courts of the jurisdiction to hear felony offenses, and (most unforgivable of all) granted white people extraterritoriality (essentially, immunity from prosecution) in Indian Country. Every single one of these women who have had their lives shattered can lay the blame at the feet of the Federal Government for turning Indian Country into the Wild West.

UPDATE: The House has voted for increased funding to "protect Native women." Fairly typical liberal response-chunk money at the problem without addressing either the real problem (racism) or the real solution (restoration of tribal sovereignty).

Astonishing Coincidence Theatre!

A young man receives a felony conviction at age 19 in 1972. Twenty-four years later, he is hired by the Texas Youth Commission, despite the conviction, which he freely discloses. Twice he is recommended for a pardon by the Texas Board of Pardons & Paroles, though the Governor fails to act. On May1, 2007, newspaper reports reveal that this man, now 56, had complained to his supervisors about sexual abuse of male juvenile offenders at TYC facilities in West Texas as early as 2003, one or two years before officials are willing to acknowledge they received notice. On May 7, 2007, this man, Anthony Mikulastik, is fired by TYC, with the official reason being his felony conviction from thirty-five years ago. TYC officials insist the firing has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Mikulastik's whistle-blowing...

This has been another exciting episode of Astonishing Coincidence Theatre!

Sexual Assault and Indian Women

A good overview at Indian Country Today of the Amnesty International report I recently blogged about concerning sexual assault against Indian women. The report has naturally led to some furious debate in the feminist blogosphere.

Read This...

...but also read the comments, and see the vile racism and anti-Indian bigotry drip off the pages of this supposedly progressive blog. Then head over to Rachel's Tavern and read comment 4, which points out something neither the original article nor the NPR story mentioned-namely that in 86% of reported cases of sexual assault against Indian women, THE ATTACKERS WERE NON-INDIAN MEN. So why do you suppose this particular facet of the story was overlooked?

Hat tip to The Native Blog for putting me on to this story.

Jessica's Law...

...a bad idea whose time has come. At least until it's declared unconstitutional. I have no problem with getting tough on child sex predators; in fact, as a father, I'm all for it. I was for civil commitment for offenders early on. This bill, however, won't help. Most child victims are victimized by relatives or other people they know. Family members will be much LESS likely to turn a relative in if they know he is going to get a minimum 25 year stretch, or the needle. And for the rarer stranger-abduction cases, this bill makes it more likely than the predators will kill their victims, rather than risk the death penalty. This bill is nothing but a campaign sound-bite for David Dewhurst when he runs for governor in 2010; just another example of politicians mucking with the law for their own self-aggrandizement, and making the most vulnerable among us less safe.

Folsom Prison Blues

The Legislature appears to be considering a method for dealing with non-violent and drug-addicted offenders a little more subtle than simply building more prisons. This is good news as the current system has done nothing to curb the epidemic of meth addiction that is ravaging Texas.

And Throw Away the Key

Kvatch over at Blognonymous discusses the truly appalling incarceration rate in this country, which dwarfs that of communist dictatorship in both per capita and real numbers! It would be one thing if all this lockin' 'em up was actually making us safer, but America remains the most violent of all the Western Industrialized Democracies, even after a 30 year decline in crime rates. And, to be fair, European crime rates seem to be increasing.

Texas Criminal Justice System Different for Poor, Rich!

Also, air is good for you! I shouldn't be so snarky, but things like this rarely surprise me anymore. Maybe I've gotten too cynical for this job. Granted, this is a pretty egregious example of the double-standard, but in my experience it has less to do with race than it does with class. I have seen my share of poor whites given a harsher sentence than a well-to-do person (of whatever race), given the same fact pattern. Part of it, of course, is human nature; judges and prosecutors (and defense counsel and jurors) are people, too. They have their own built-in prejudices, or more to the point, they have a natural tendency to identify more with people who are like them: professional, well-educated. Another problem is the indigent defense system. Dallas County now has a public-defender's office staffed with professionals, and there are now minimum standards for attorneys who accept court appointments in counties that don't have a public defender (the overwhelming majority of them). When Tyrone Brown was adjudicated in 1990, it was not unheard-of for lawyers literally straight out of law school being assigned to defend persons facing first degree felony charges, with the possibility of life in prison. A wise old attorney from New Braunfels once told me the (possibly appocryphal) story of his first court appointment right after being sworn in as a member of the bar: a capital murder trial. And, of course, there's the unfortunately not apocryphal story of the death row inmate in Texas whose lawyer slept through significant portions of his trial. And, finally, you have the fact that trial judges in Texas are elected, and on partisan ballots. And so are courts of appeals and so is the Court of Criminal Appeals, which has become so rabidly one-sided in its opinions as to become a "national laughingstock," according to one of its own members, Justice Tom Price.

NOW I Feel Safer...

The Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security is (allegedly) a pedophile who tried to prey on underage girls over the internet. Isn't this sort of illegal prediliction exactly the kind of thing that you would expect to pick up in background check for someone in a sensitive position? Can Homeland Security not do ANYTHING right?